July 11 – 15, 2016 Jessa updates a post about the Berger Inquiry, the time that the Canadian government actually asked the people who were here first what they wanted to do with the land that belonged to them in the first place. Rose’s backyard in Brooklyn is full of squirrels fighting, not just the […]
July 4 – 8, 2016 What do you do when, as usual in America, people get shot? Only this time you’re first on the scene? And you’re in charge? And years afterward, you still see the scene, over and over? Craig’s friend tells stories to little kids, over and over. Michelle writes about little kids […]
Every year, some media entity terrifies the nation with a Shark Week. We here at LWON feel strongly that sharks, while terrifying, look scary and live in the ocean and therefore are pretty easy to recognize and avoid. Much harder to recognize and avoid are the innocent-looking, furry, feathery animals that under the pretense of […]
June 20 – 24, 2016 I start researching for a story and you know how that goes, rabbit hole, branching rabbit hole, another branch, another, and pretty soon I’m so far into Ballykilcline and Texas I’m never coming home. After a day in which we, for the first time in history, forgot to post anything, […]
I’m having trouble with a story. First I went down one rabbit hole (the effects, on both sides of the Atlantic, of the Irish Potato Famine) until it branched into two (now-dead towns, one in Maryland, one in Ireland), and then I went down both. You can picture me heading down one, scrambling back up, […]
May 23 – 27, 2016 Remember Erik’s argument that cultures have their own keywords/cyphers? Guest Sean Treacy says that the keyword for Italian culture is “bella,” beauty, to such an extent that the beautiful also defines the good. Think about that a minute. Every year since he was a kid, Erik’s gone on The Ride […]
This is the latest in a series in which science’s metaphors offer the explanations of and guidance for the most cryptic of life’s problems. A few weeks ago I was at a conference about galaxy evolution. In the titles of many talks was the puzzling phrase, “secular evolution.” Secular? as opposed to religious? so secular […]
May 2 – 6, 2016 Guest Veronique Greenwood’s final post in her series about learning Chinese ends with triumph: she not only argues with a Chinese cab driver, she wins. Meanwhile the rest of the LWONers were inspired, got into the act, and voila! ecco! ¡mira! a whole Week of Learning Languages posts! Richard proposes […]